Journalist – Historian – Speaker
This story was just brought to my attention in the comment from “Mel” in my previous post. In 2010, John T. Williams, a Native Alaskan woodcarver, was walking down the street holding a 3-inch folding knife and a piece of wood. Officer Ian Birk approached him from behind, firearm drawn, and ordered Williams to drop …
Donald Ray “Hambone” Wilson, an African-American man has schizophrenia. This fact was known to the police. He was shot in the chest. In this video, he is surrounded by police as he holds a steak knife. He is clearly in mental health crisis and as the police engage into close proximity, they become in danger …
Content Note: Child Murder. I wrote a piece for CNN about the murder of children with disabilities. I wrote it because of the media discourse I saw surrounding the death of London McCabe. I wrote it because that framing was not unusual when this kind of murder happens. I wrote it to provide a …
On CNN – in “London McCabe’s Death Matters” – I argued that the way we talk about autism, our ideas about the condition, our ideas about disability more generally, shape the worldview that can lead to child murder. The correlation in these cases is not lack of services or money, but ideas about disability. Correlation …
I am a college professor. We have a college savings fund for my daughter, principally funded by parents so far, though we’re beginning to be able to contribute too. We do not have a college savings fund for my son, because he has Down syndrome, and we never thought that college was a reasonable option. We …
The physician assisted suicide debate is taking place right now, thanks to Brittany Maynard’s decision to go public with her death plans, on multiple levels. 1. The abstract ethics of the practice (in abstract, I’m for it). 2. The ways in which it’s applied (in practice, the innate ableism of our society encourages certain kinds of …
Content Note: Suicide Recently, Brittany Maynard, a young woman with terminal brain cancer, chose to end her own life. She deliberately made her death very public in hopes, I believe, of sparking debate and conversation. I am still deeply busy in book proofs so cannot write much, but I tweeted this: It’s reasonable to be …
I’ve written about Sara Hendren and her mantra – “All Technology is Assistive Technology” before – both in my review of John Scalzi’s recent book (which is basically about assistive tech) and on the blog. Hendren has a new piece over on Medium’s Backchannel exploring her mantra with 6 rules on design and assistive tech. Please …
WARNING – VERY DISTURBING DEPICTIONS OF ABUSE This is what happens when the prison becomes the default first-line of care for people with serious mental health issues. This is what happens with prison guards grow up in a culture demeaning people with disabilities. This is what happens when you feed the cult of compliance. This …
Yesterday, KQED – NPR in San Francisco – published a long piece on police killings and psychiatric disability in San Francisco. 58% of all police killings involve forms of disability such as schizophrenia, many of them include weapons, and yet there may be ways to rethink strategies that could save some of the lives. The piece …